Uneasy Ties

"Curiosity is useful for us detectives. It makes us nibble away at impossible problems."

- MacDougal Duff 

Charlotte Armstrong's The Case of the Weird Sisters (1943) was jotted down on my wish list after a laudatory and tantalizing review from Patrick, who still blogs At the Scene of the Crime, praising the novel as "one of the most uniquely-constructed impossible crime mysteries I've ever come across." Naturally, my interest was piqued, especially after finding out the book escaped the attention of Robert Adey's Locked Room Murders and Other Inpossible Crimes (1991), but that was for an obvious reason – 'cause it is not an impossible crime story. But more on that later.

I have to agree Armstrong took an unconventional, but fanciful, approach to constructing the plot and characterization that was both in-depth and grotesque. In a way, the story reminded me of some of John Dickson Carr's later period Sir Henry Merrivale novels, in which he experimented by removing or reducing one of the central ingredients of a whodunit (e.g. A Graveyard to Let, 1949).

The Case of the Weird Sisters begins conventionally enough with the engagement between Alice Brennan and Innes Whitlock, who has one million dollars to his name. It's a marriage of convenience and they both take something away from it: Innes gets the wife he desires and Alice's future is secure in a rapidly changing world. However, the unconventionality begins to seep through when their car, conveniently (plot-wise, that is), breaks down while passing through Innes hometown of Ogaunee, Michigan, forcing them in a situation they would've otherwise avoided – visiting Innes' three sisters at their ancestral home.

"Whitlock Girls" are what remains of the town's past dynasty and their distorted personalities, detached from reality, is reflected in both their characters and physical presentation. Maud is a lazy slob who gradually lost her hearing and a car-crash left Isabel with one arm, but Gertrude is the one Innes fears as it was negligence that left her blind in a horse-riding accident. Maud, Isabel and Gertrude are locked in their own worlds, but the question arises if these separate entities could form an alliance when they learn of the engagement and the accidents begin to happen. The missing road sign could've meant anything, but the falling lamp and tinkering around with gas pipes are clear indicators of malice. And they do what every rational human being would do in a case of attempted murder: call the police bring in an amateur detective!

MacDougal Duff is a retired historian-turned-detective and furnished this review with an opening quote, but The Case of the Weird Sisters really shouldn't be classified as being of the impossible variety. The nature of the disguised murder attempts require the simple power sight and sight or the practical use of both arms, however, the physical restrictions aren't even considered a necessary obstacle by Duff – arguing the sisters could've been in cahoots or one of them isn't half as disabled as everyone believes. You could argue it's a borderline impossible crime, but I would (IMHO) place it closer to such howdunits as Dorothy L. Sayers' Unnatural Death (1927). The disabilities of the three sisters mainly functions here to cross a nifty array of possible scenarios off against the sequence of events.

Patrick justly points out that the sequence of events, in some instances, was perhaps too clever for its own good, but the genuine weakness of The Case of the Weird Sisters may also be the books biggest triumph: Armstrong kneaded a fascinating detective story with compellable characters out of the mundane facts of how-and when a table lamp was thrown over and a road sign was removed. It's not a first-grade mystery and perhaps needed a full-blown impossible problem as the centerpiece of the plot, but it's a strangely compelling story. 

By the way, I smirked immaturely a couple of times at the poor choice of words directed at the Whitlock sisters. Duff actually begins explaining himself to the blind, but stuck-up, Gertrude with "Well, you see..." and part of me wanted Duff to follow up with "...truth only falls on deaf ears if people refuse to see it or grab it with both hands, you fossilized crayfish. Why aren't you collecting dust up in the attic?" 

Hey, I gathered from the overall story that Armstrong didn't like the Whitlock's either. So... until next time.

Mapping Out a Plan

"It does help the reader relate events to setting, and does so accurately and with a sense of atmosphere. As a combination of decoration and usefulness, it's probably the best of the lot."

- Jack Iams (on the "mapback" edition of his Girl Meets Body, 1947)

I unearthed a spiral-bound book during a minor restructuring of my shelves and it's one of those books I intended to read, but lingered on the pile before being shelved. Well, Piet Schreuders' The Dell Mapbacks (1997) is actually more of a diary posing as a booklet than an actual book. It goes in a few short chapters, fourteen pages in total, over the history of the immense popular and highly collectible Dell Mapbacks – distinguished by their airbrushed cover art and crime maps on the back covers.

Schreuders is a graphic designer by trade and admirably adopted the Dell Mapback style-and trademarks for the compilation of The Dell Mapbacks, which is plainly a labor of love of a collector/fan. The book even opens with What This Book is About ("a series of highly collectible BOOKS published between 1943 and 1953"), Wouldn't You Like to Know ("who murdered the DELL historian, William H. Lyles?") and Persons this Book is about – followed by a dramatis personae and a List of Exciting Illustrations.

Dell Books was brought into being in the middle of World War II when Dell founder, George T. Delacorte, Jr., needed paper to print books and Lloyd Smith of Western Printing & Lithographing wanted printing work, but the most eye-brow raising from this chapter was how these beloved collectibles were abridged or even censored! "Some books were abridged drastically so as to fit Dell's page requirements" and "although the front cover blurb... suggested that the books were complete, they rarely were." And worse: "one compositor, Ralph MacNichol, spiced the house style with his editorial judgment by removing words like Christ, Jesus, and Goddamn." It's good to see one moral arbiter had to foresight to see the possibility of the nazi's eventually opening a North-American branch of the Kultuurkamer and brushed up on his résumé just in case. Hey, I had to raise that petty censorship with a Godwin.

The following chapter concerns the art-department of Dell Books and in particular the work of Gerald B. Gregg, who painted the covers of 212 novels and drew a couple of back covers, and praised for "extraordinary skill with the airbrush which made the Dell covers of the 1940s unique in appearance." True to the nature of a detective story, Gregg was "resorting to the tricks of the time to get the effects" such as pasting a paper doily onto the bottom of a painting (i.e. cover of Fanny Heaslip Lea’s Half Angel, 1946; a romance novel). The Dell Mapbacks reproduces fourteen of Gregg's covers in this book. Another artist mentioned in this chapter is Robert Stanley, who used himself as a model for characters such as Sam Spade, Mike Shayne, Hercule Poirot and Zorro! 

However, it's the crime map on the back covers that stands out as the standard feature among these Dell Book trademarks, and the feature that keeps drawing-in readers, but they probably cost them the most work – from editors and volunteers to map specialists. Something worth mentioning is that Schreuders included two of his own (fake) mapbacks, but they are truly astonishing pieces of art! I especially liked the map showing the location, Haags Gemeentemuseum, of the first international paperback art exhibition in The Hague, in February, 1981. The chapter also notes Dell historian, Lyles, discovered the identity of a prolific crime back artist, Ruth Belew, who drew 150 (or so) in the series.

The historic overview of Dell Books ends on a sad note with the story of William H. Lyles, writer and researcher, who wrote a biography of the Dell Books entitled Putting Dell on the Map (1983) and it's reputedly a meticulous analysis of the stories in comparison with the artwork/crime maps. Unfortunately, there were personal and financial problems for Lyles (resulting in selling-off his entire and complete collection of mapbacks), which ended with him snapping and committing suicide after shooting (and wounding) his then girlfriend in July of 1996. The remainder of The Dell Mapbacks consists of a diary for 1998 and interspersed with replications of front-and back covers of various Dell publications – from mystery and romance to western and science fiction. Flipped through the book again, but it's hard to pick a favorite. Even the simple map of the European Theater of Operation, from the back cover of Eisenhower Was My Boss (1948; Kay Summersby), makes me want to seek out that book.   

Long story short, The Dell Mapbacks is an interesting curio and as collectible for Mapback collectors as the original books. And Schreuders included a list of essential reading, if your interest has been piqued on this niche subject.

Yes, I just rambled for more than a full page on what basically amounts to a calendar/diary from 16 years ago, because it had some background info in it about a defunct publisher of detective stories from the 40s. Again: welcome to the niche corner.

Behind Locked Doors

"Is it a big house or is he just out to the police?" 

- Lt. Columbo (Murder Under Glass, 1978)

Looking back at my review of E.C.R. Lorac's Fire in the Thatch (1946), I noted that, while it was a good read, I'd probably end up only remembering the story's depiction of post-WWII England and the same was true for the backdrop of Murder by Matchlight (1945) – which I read before this blog was flung on the web. Lorac obviously knew how to create an evocative surrounding and giving her characters a touch of life, but Rope's End, Rogue's End (1942) indicates Lorac also knew her way around an intricate tangle of plot threads. And is it any wonder the book secured a spot in Robert Adey's Locked Room Murders and Other Impossible Crimes (1991)? Anyhow, on to the review.

Wulfstane Manor is a mansion that served as a fortified holding in the days of the Plantagenets, but has remained untouched since Queen Anne's time and the place is beginning to show its age. Lorac's (almost) turns the old, creaking Wulfstane Manor with its faded and worn furniture in a character in itself: like a very old man sitting quietly in the corner and observing everyone around him. In this case, it's what left of the once wealthy Mallowood clan. The house now belongs to Veronica and her twin brother, Martin, who suffered from infantile paralysis as a teenager and is easily affected by stress, which is partly the reason why their father left them the house – and that caused a row and fall-out between them and their three brothers.

Richard is an adventurer and "brings back unknown primulas and new Tibetan poppies for wealthy gardeners to cherish," while Basil and Paul replenished the lost family wealth by becoming "city wallahs" in the finance sector. It has always been Paul's wish to restore the old family home, but there's a lot of bad blood between Paul and Veronica. And, of course, this family is reunited at Wulfstane the day before Paul leaves for a trip around the world. Nevertheless, he tries a last ditch effort to pursued his sister to sell the house and may even tempered with their already modest income to drive his point home (pun not intended, I swear!).

The exchange between brother and sister has all the courtesy of a meeting between two diplomats from the U.S. and Soviet Union during the Cold War: "How pleasant that we can both express our aversions in a manner so academic, Paul! As a family, our mode of speech is remarkably uncorrupted by either temper or jargon" replied with "Yes. There's still something to be said for breeding... we don't descend to face-slapping tactics in practice, whatever the trend of our feelings..."

Still, the reunion wasn't a complete disaster and a row was prevented, but the following day a gunshot is heard from the upper-floor and the solid, unyielding door to the disused playroom had to be forcefully broken open and what they found was the body of one of the four brothers – a sporting gun with a piece of string leading from his foot to the trigger. A simple and obvious case of suicide, however, loose ends brings Chief Inspector Macdonald in for consultation and begins to ask pesky questions.

Rope's End, Rogue's End is a legitimate locked room mystery and doesn't relay on the cop-out solution of the murderer dumping the key in the room after breaking down the door. I hate those. And, unfortunately, usually found in these second-tier mystery novels. However, the impossibility of the murder actually strengthened the plot of the story, because it's one of few aspects in the overall story that genuinely prevents a haughty armchair detective from being too clever and cute. I think everyone who has read a few detective stories intuitively comes up with the same solution, but, factoring in that two of the four brothers are out of reach (after the murder) and how everyone's movements played out really upset every possible variation of this solution I tried. It had to be right!

I also liked how the locked room problem was presented and treated: the victim was heard moving around in the playroom before the sound of a gunshot and the only escape the window provides is a thirty foot drop. The badly maintained roof is as impassable as a minefield and alternative solutions are discussed/rejected. The actual solution is fairly simple (in theory) in comparison with its presentation, but it's acceptable and original enough to not leave me disappointed.

That being said, Rope End's, Rogue's End is not completely flawless, but it's the best and most skillfully handled detective story I have read from Lorac thus far.

The Art of Deception

"For in the long run, either through a lie, or through truth, people were bound to give themselves away..." 

- Agatha Christie's After the Funeral (1953)

After a brief, unannounced leave-of-absence from this blog, I've been slowly picking up my normal reading pace and managed to finish My True Love Lies (1947) by Lenore Glen Offord in just a few days. And no, contrary to the title, it's not a sugary, one-note romance novel, in which true love stands as the sole survivor, but a bone-fide detective story by a writer who served as the mystery critic for the San Francisco Globe for three decades – and stood-in for Anthony Boucher whenever he was unavailable during World War II.

My True Love Lies is set in the year following Allied victories over the Axis powers in Europe and the Pacific, but civilian and military life is still entwined in the San Francisco of 1946. The streets are filled with navy uniforms and the story's protagonist, Noel Bruce, has a job as a government job as a paid driver while she studies (line-) drawing at the Sherwin Art School. Noel is also friends with a charming and good humored Navy commander, named Miles Coree, who came back to San Francisco to find his fiancée married to another man.

A great detective once observed artistic blood is liable to take the strangest forms and the body found inside an unfinished war sculpture, a clay model called "Woman at the Grave," can attest to that statement!

Offord is represented on my best-of list with The Glass Mask (1944), because it’s an excellent treatment of the "perfect murder" ploy without a cop-out ending and an example of the kind of detective stories American's weren't suppose to be writing at the time: the kind set in a small and sleepy country-side town in which time has crept forward instead of marched. My True Love Lies doesn't bat in the same league as The Glass Mask, but the writing plainly shows Offord knew her way around a plot.

The reader is constantly kept busy with mysterious developments and analysis's of the crime. There are crimes from the past lingering in the present and unknown pursuers are harassing Noel and the relationship between the different characters become more, and more, entangled. There are the "Five Scared Artists:" Noel, Anna Tannehill (it was her sculpture in which the body was discovered), Will Rome, Rita Steffany and Paul Watkins – who's inseparable from his cousin, Daisy. This lot is rounded out by the head of the art school, Eugene "Papa Gene" Fenmer, a brash reporter from the Eagle, Red Hobart, a derelict known as "Old Dad" and the ex-wife of the murdered man. And they all gravitate towards the scene of the crime.

Offord actually came up with a clever solution as to why the corpse was hidden in the clay model (other than dramatic effect) and there was a nifty double-twist at the end, which made My True Love Lies an above average mystery novel. It missed that special spark to make it really great, but it's definitely better than similar artsy-themed detective stories such as Dorothy L. Sayers' Five Red Herrings (1931) and Ngiao Marsh's Artists in Crime (1938).

In parting, here's a nugget of wisdom tugged away in the opening of the second chapter of My True Love Lies and reflects on the news playing up the Bohemian angle of the murder case: "Like many journalistic implications, these were partly true and mostly a long way from accuracy." We're almost a century removed from the publication of this book, but I'm afraid this little quote still holds some truth today considering you could make a special-edition DVD box-set for 3D home entertainment systems of the recent news coverage of the missing Flight 370 with downloadable content of Jesse Ventura taking the viewer through all the conspiracy theories.  

Well, enough filler writing for one review and I'll probably grab a good, old-fashioned locked room mystery from the shelves for my next read.

 

Rummaging in the Past

"I suppose we'd better ask some questions." 

- D.I. Anastasia Hardy (Kate Ellis' "The Odour of Sanctity," collected The Mammoth Book of Locked Room Mysteries and Impossible Crimes, 2000)

The year 1920 is generally accepted as a semiofficial starting point for the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, which witnessed the debut of Agatha Christie and Hercule Poirot in The Mysterious Affair at Styles, and the rest, as they say, is history. During the same period, H.C. Bailey and one of his two series-characters, Mr. Reginald "Reggie" Fortune, were introduced in a collection of short stories, entitled Call Mr. Fortune (1920), and was the first of many popular and critically acclaimed mysteries from his hands – good and recognizable enough for Christie to spoof in Partners in Crime (1929). 

Howard Haycraft noted at the time: "it seems safe to say that any impartial statistical poll of the sentiments of readers on both side of the Atlantic would assure a position high on the list to H.C. Bailey" and S.S. van Dine reputedly began to reshape Philo Vance in the image of Reggie Fortune, but, today, Bailey has (undeservedly) become a footnote in the genre’s history. 

I say undeservedly based on a handful of novels, such as the excellent and reissued Shadow on the Wall (1934) and Black Land, White Land (1937) or the superb and sadly out-of-print The Sullen Sky Mystery (1935), with only The Great Game (1939) falling short of the mark – which is surprising considering it's a crossover of sorts. And I like crossovers! However, The Bishop's Crime (1940) proved to be a return to those earlier novels. 

The cathedral village of Badon is the backdrop of The Bishop's Crime and dominating the horizon of the town is the historical tower of Badon Cathedral, known as "Jacob's Ladder," on which a previous prior envisioned angels ascending and descending from heaven, but the past keeps its hold on the place in other ways. There used to be shrine devoted to a statuette of the Virgin Mary, discovered by the founder of the church, a Saxon King, however, the treasure was reputedly lost at sea after Henry VIII claimed it – which begs the question if the relics were hidden before the shipping accident. 

A historical subplot is briefly teased with one or two murders buried deep in the past of Badon, but they're left there and Fortune's expertise is called upon when the body of a burglar is discovered on a well-frequented road to London. However, it's not an accident and foul play is suspected. Fortune retraces the steps of the victim back to Badon based on the content of the stomach and analyzing the dirt found underneath his nails. There's another criminal element meeting an unfortunate end and it becomes obvious someone's hunting for lost treasure, but Fortune has difficulty getting a solid grip on the case. 

It depresses and somewhat amuses Fortune as he pieces together a mosaic of slander clues, scattered across the centuries in Greek and Latin, to form a complete picture of the events that took place in Badon, and the Biblical references, lines of poetry, lost treasure and historic tie-ins makes The Bishop's Crime play out like a small epic. The resolutions, once again, reveals Fortune as an ancestor of Gladys Mitchell's Mrs. Bradley as he plays judge, jury and executions (by proxy) in meting out his own peculiar brand of justice for every guilty person involved in the case. That's interesting aspect of the "plump, drawling Reggie Fortune," who has no qualms about manipulating people into murdering each other in the pursuit of justice – much to the shock of Lomas ("My God!"). Still weird to think a TV-series like Dexter can be connected to H.C. Bailey, Gladys Mitchell (Speedy Death, 1929) and Rex Stout (Black Orchids, 1942 and "Boody Trap" in Not Quite Dead Enough, 1944).
 

Finally, I realize my review has been rather summary and lacking detail, but that's because there were gaps in reading the book, nonetheless, I enjoyed the read even if it didn't quite reach the heights of The Sullen Sky Mystery and Shadow on the Wall. It's easy to see why Bailey was considered as one of the leading lights of (British) detective fiction and reminded me to give the short Reggie Fortune stories a shot.

Jonathan Creek: The Curse of the Bronze Lamp

"Don't think you can hold a man who can use his brain."

- Prof. S.F.X. van Dusen (Jacques Futrelle's "The Problem of Cell 13")

Last night, The Curse of the Bronze Lamp (2014) closed the gate on the fifth season of Jonathan Creek and, contrary to my expectations, the ending of the episode left open a door to possibly a sixth season or another 90-minute television special.

I calculated from the synopsis the episode would end with Creek's funeral after saving Polly from a bunch of kidnappers in an impromptu bullet-catch act to put a permanent end to the series. Instead, we got more of the same, lightweight mish-mash of smaller mysteries thrown together to form an episode – except that here it was stitched in one overlapping story. So that was an improvement over The Letters of Septimus Noone (2014) and The Sinner and the Sandman (2014). 

First of all, there's the kidnapping of the clever wife of a cabinet minister, who's whisked away and kept in chains in a disused bunker in the woods, but clues are beginning to find their way out of the sealed prison: a feat only imaginable if she possessed the power of teleportation. The kidnapping is tied-in with the woman who cleans for Jonathan and Polly Creek, Denise, who begins to regret finding "Aladdin's Lamp" at a car boot sale and wishing for more excitement in her life. 

Be careful what you wish for!

 Polly has to help her dispose of the body of a male gigolo, who died in her bathtub, which is part of the reinvented dynamic of the series I genuinely enjoy – namely the comedic absurdity likely to be found in those original bantering, mystery solving husband-and-wife teams. Unfortunately, the comedy and the plot of this season don't gel as well as Kelley Roos' classic The Frightened Stiff (1942) and the excellent Sailor, Take Warning! (1944). Which, IMHO, is what Renwick should've aimed for this season even if it had come at the expense of the locked room motif of the series. 

There was a minor locked room mystery in last night's episode: after her ordeal with the gigolo in the bathtub, Denise changes the sheets on her bed and locks the door of her bedroom before going to sleep, but the next morning she finds an expensive watch underneath her pillow belonging to cabinet minister's wife! How did it get into the locked bedroom? 

At the end The Curse of the Bronze Lamp, I began to wonder if Renwick had read the criticism in the Jonathan Creek topic on the John Dickson Carr message board concerning one part of his plotting technique (SPOILER: the use of (unknown) accomplices) to create a seemingly impossible situation – which has now been completely phased out and replaced for trivial or coincidence laden impossibilities. The appearance of the wristwatch from a sealed bunker into a locked bedroom is a good example of the latter and the lotto prediction from the previous episode of the former. You can roughly work out how the watch got there, if you recognize the story the kidnap-plot was based on and snatching a book title from Carter Dickson for the episode was just to throw dust in the eyes of any genre savvy person who might be watching.

By the way... is it really that hard to come up with an impossible situation and a reasonably good solution? I'm always happily plotting along and coming up with possibilities how the murderer could've escapes from a locked room and failed to leave any footprints in several inches of snow. 

In lieu of any competition, The Curse of the Bronze Lamp stands as the best of the three episodes, but only because the plot was more focused and the last 40-minutes weren't as excruciatingly boring as the first twenty odd minutes. However, I'm afraid the only thing fans of Jonathan Creek will take away from this season is a kinder feeling towards the third and fourth season of the series.

Unfinished Business

"Every silver cane has a grubby end..."

- Albert Stroller (Hustle)  

Georgiana Ann Randolph was an accomplished and adulated mystery writer under the nom de plume of "Craig Rice," whose booze fueled, madcap shenanigans centering around John J. Malone garnered her the moniker of Queen of the Screwball Mystery, but Rice's standalones and reputedly ghosted novels carved out a reputation for themselves.

Home Sweet Homicide (1944) stands out in Rice's oeuvre as a rare, but truly original, standalone novel and essential reading for everyone who enjoys good fiction – regardless of which genre you prefer. I'm even tempted to say the book transcended the genre. However, Rice wrote more than just that one book and the praise I have seen being heaped on To Catch a Thief (1943), written as if by "Daphne Sanders," secured the title a spot at the top of my wish list. Well, I wasn't disappointed when I finally got around to reading it.

John Moon doubles as protagonist and antagonist in To Catch a Thief, shifting between thievery and snooping around for clues, which makes him ancestor of Lawrence Block's The Burglar Who-series, but relieving Poppy Hymers of a string of emeralds has top priority at the opening of the story – before everything becomes progressively worse. The car they're in crashes and Moon is forced to improvise a kidnapping. Poppy feels isolated from the world and decides to join Moon in his mission. And it's a mission. The story moves to the office of Donovan, a private-investigator, who was hired to investigate a thief targeting a group of seven men and sends them warning notes – signed by a person referring to himself simply as "N." Yes. This aspect of the plot vibrates with V for Vendetta-vibes.

The group formed a syndicate and left a financial massacre in their wake when they crashed the stock market, wiping out a slew of innocent people in the process, which gives Rice an excuse to slip in a bit of social commentary on a situation that's (to say the least) still topical today. Donovan gets to poke around the debris of lives they wrecked, while Poppy's stepmother, Dorothy Hymers, cooks up a plot with her lover, Leon Martelli, to steal her own bracelet and blame it on the mysterious "N" – who's well aware of the plot and stages a double-cross. The double-cross turns into a triple-cross when someone strangles an unconscious Mrs. Hymers after Moon left the house. Like Arsène Lupin in Maurice Leblanc's 813 (1910), Moon spearheads the murder inquiry in which he's one of the suspects and knows his way around a disguise. He even poses as a keen amateur detective to bother and drug the policeman guarding the scene of the crime!

This all makes To Catch a Thief very different in structure from every other Rice novel I have read to date, but you can still identify it as one of her stories because it's covered with one tell-tale marking: her detectives operate as a team. There's Poppy playing Evey to Moon's "V" and Donovan has close ties with Tom Clark of The Gazette and Inspector Garrity of the Homicide Squad. Moon also has semi-official team mates in a former prizefighter and a forger/fixer. There's a Leverage reference hidden in there somewhere.

Moon and Donovan agree on a truce in order to find the murderer of Mrs. Hymers, while suspects go missing and the body count keeps rising, however, the actual question of the book is the identity of John Moon – who could be anyone from a figure in the background story of the financial raiders or even maintaining a third identity.

I love a good roguish tale as much as a well crafted mystery and Rice skillfully guided the plot through the gray area separating the genres, but, surprisingly, the zaniness was toned down quite a bit and you could say this was Rice at her most sober. To Catch a Thief is not an overly serious or drab book, far from it, it's not written in the tipsy, punch-drunk style of the Malone novels. Despite the typical Ricean plot elements, there's a serious, but human, touch to the story and there were a few very well drawn scenes. I liked the book is what I'm trying to say. But then again, Rice seldom disappoints.

Note for the curious: the penname "Daphne Sanders" was the name of a character from The Wrong Murder (1940). If only JDC knew picking a pseudonym could be that easy.

Jonathan Creek: The Sinner and the Sandman

"Since the Brother of Death daily haunts us with dying mementoes."

- Sir Thomas Browne

Where to begin, where to begin...

The Sinner and the Sandman (2014) is the second episode from the fifth, three-part season of Jonathan Creek, and as much as I hate to say it, the series is dying at its leisure. That much is obvious after tonight. The previous episode, The Letters of Septimus Noone (2014), suffered from having too many plot threads and not enough time to explore them all, but here it was the exact opposite – a five-minute brain teaser stretched into a sixty-minute episode. Nothing happened for nearly an hour!

David Renwick gives, more and more, the impression of being completely out of ideas for seemingly impossible problems for the series and tired comedy bits were thrown in as substitutions. They might as well have re-launched this season (without acknowledging it) under the title One Foot in the Grave and draw a chuckle from confusing their viewers.

Anyhow, Jonathan and Polly Creek are immersing themselves in the plain, drab everyday existence of village life, away from Jonathan’s alternative career, but there’s always a mystery to be found in the British countryside – even if they turn out to be nothing of the kind. Polly is involved with the local community center, where a scandal is brewing, and Jonathan has to make a charitable call on the local recluse, Mr. Eric Ipswich a.k.a. "The Amazing Astrodamus," whose home harbors a feat of clairvoyance from the past. Behind fifty years worth of wallpaper, they find the winning lottery numbers from a local winner with the words "WILL WIN" scrawled underneath it. Unfortunately, the (gist of the) solution should occur to everyone almost immediately, especially after the cross symbol is found, with the real the real problem being how to verify it. Renwick nicely tied a problem to this apparent act of clairvoyance, but coincidence is the key word for both of them. That's why I didn’t tag this review with "Locked Room Mysteries" and "Impossible Crimes" labels.

There are slight, almost residue traces of the supernatural when the arrival of a baby at the vicarage coincides with reports of a shadowy, hunchbacked beast with glowing eyes prowling the garden and going through the trash. Again, there's not much of interest here and presented only to deliver an obvious punch line at the end. Only time Jonathan Creek made me laugh this season was in the previous episode, when one of the characters suddenly realized she had read a text message meant for Polly and bellowed on for a full minute how glad she is it wasn’t her dad who'd just died – with Polly sitting right next to her! So dark. Comedy here hardly deserves a second look.

The "Sandman" from the episode title is a figure from Polly's nightmare and the dream sequence suggests this was a British relative of Uncle Paul who urged Polly to keep grown-up secrets, but whereas comedy was attempted to draw from the other plot-thread, here it was to create a forced, emotional moment to end the show with. It was so sweet... I'm still wiping the diabetes from the corner of my eyes.

I want to stress here how much I normally enjoy Jonathan Creek and actually like how Renwick reinvented the character, but, plot-and story wise, the series has now reached a phase were it could apply for euthanasia had it run in my country. That's really the nicest way I can put it (rewrote and scrapped a lot for this review). I'll watch the last episode for completion, however, I don't even expect it to be traditionally that one good episode every season has had. But, hopefully, I'm wrong and Renwick saved the best for last. 

Finally, I hope to have a regular review up this weekend. Hopefully. 

On Stranger Tides

"It's a princely scheme."

- Captain Hook (J.M. Barrie's Peter and Wendy, 1911) 

I'll probably be returning to that luminous age of detective stories for the next review, having bobbed around in its post-era for the past few weeks, but, for the moment, I'll be flicking a glance at Death in a Deck Chair (1984) by K.K. Beck – praised for her "graceful recreations of the old-fashioned, Golden Age whodunit."

K.K. Beck is an American mystery novelist who debuted in 1984 with Death in a Deck Chair and Death of a Prom Queen, published under the penname "Marie Oliver," followed by a dozen or so detective novels over the next twenty years. Beck had two, short-lived series-characters in her repertoire and one of them was a 19-year-old woman, Iris Cooper, whose adventures are set in the 1920s and invoke the mysteries of the period – laced with gentle, tongue-in-cheek humor.

Death in a Deck Chair takes place aboard the S.S. Irenia bound for the United States and homeward for Iris Cooper, who circled the globe with her aunt, Hermione, and now apprehensive about the future instead of enjoying the last days of the trip. There is, however, no shortage of interesting passengers aboard the ship: Professor Ignacz Probrislow's expertise is the criminal mind and is accompanied by his secretary, Mr. Norman Twist. The professor occasionally interpreters for Cardinal DeLaurenti, who doesn't speak a word of English. Vera Nadi is one of the shining stars of moving pictures and is being dogged by a newspaperman named James Clancy. A German governess, Fräulein Reiter, is charged with looking after two energetic, nosy children aboard and there's British Colonel Marris. There are a bunch of Americans, like the millionaire Mr. Ogle, Judge Omar Griffin and Mrs. Griffin, and a pianist of the orchestra whispers words of warning about one of them to Iris.

All in all, a nice a collective of potential suspects to buzz around the promenade deck at the moment, one of them, expertly pushes a knife in the back of Mr. Twist without being seen. I immediately zoomed-in on the wrong suspect, because the book was listed in Robert Adey's Locked Room Murders (1991) as an impossible stabbing and circumstances lead me to believe Beck had retooled a shopworn trick to be audaciously used in the open-air. That was not the case. Not that the actual method was any less daring, but I wouldn't have tagged the book as a (full) impossible crime novel. The name of the character I suspected also cemented my conviction longer than it should've lasted (look up the authors full name).

Evidently, Death in a Deck Chair is a charming emulation of Agatha Christie, but not necessarily of the titles you’d imagine from the description thus far. There are talks about and connections with a European kingdom that has disappeared from the map in the aftermath of The Great War. The shipboard setting and international cast of characters makes you think of Murder on the Orient Express (1934) and Death on the Nile (1937), but Balkan politics, sinister society names Comrades of a New Dawn, false identities and lost royalty creeping to the foreground places the plot closer to The Secret of Chimneys (1925) – which is a book I hadn't thought about or read in a very, very long time. I was actually surprised I remembered parts of that book.

Anyhow, Beck's talent as a writer showed in entwining these opposing plot elements (old-fashioned whodunit vs. spy/pre-WWII royalty thriller), while maintaining a light and humorous touch to the story, without becoming outright farcical. I wouldn't rank Death in a Deck Chair at the top of the list of shipboard mysteries, but it's an accomplished, gentle throwback to a time when detective stories were allowed to be fun and a tad-bit eccentric. I would say you should judge for yourself and make the crossing from cover-to-cover, but that would be a word joke (of sorts) and people always cringe at them.

Jonathan Creek: The Letters of Septimus Noone

"There is no point in using the word impossible to describe something that has clearly happened."

 - Douglas Adams (Dirk Gentle's Holistic Detective Agency, 1987)

After eons of one-off appearances in holiday specials, Jonathan Creek reemerged on the small screen last evening in the first of three regular episodes, entitled The Letters of Septimus Noone (2014), but David Renwick, creator and sole writer of the series, took a different approach to the plot this time around – tilting it at an inverted angle.

Jonathan & Polly Creek

The first difference between The Letters of Septimus Noone and the specials of the preceding years is the lack of an atmospheric setting and back-story permeating with suggestions of the supernatural. There aren't any bedrooms digesting its guest over night or portraits coming to life here. However, it's not a return to the old form either. 

Jonathan Creek and his wife, Polly, are attending a West End musical performance of Gaston Leroux's The Mystery of the Yellow Room (1907) and the seemingly impossible attack in the play is echoed backstage. Star of the show, Juno Pirelli, is found with a knife wound in her dressing room after they had to break open the bolted door and witnesses in the hallway saw nobody sneaking in-and out of the room – leaving them stunned and baffled. Only the viewer at home saw the whole thing unfold and this was done so they could have a chuckle at the expense of Creek's rival: a young criminology student with a keen eye for details and a penchant for leaps of logic. 

The very Sherlockian Ridley

Ridley is a nudge and a wink at Sherlock and his first encounter with Creek has a scene in which he (wrongly) deducts he just returned from Reykjavik, complete of close-ups and zoom-ins of the clues, but Ridley was mainly there to provide a preposterous false solution for the attack in the locked dressing room. The main components of Ridley’s solution are old hat, but there was one, subtle detail borrowed from one of my favorite impossible crime novels. Did you spot it?

There are also subplots lurking in the background of the episode. An elderly woman, Hazel Prosser, shares an incredible story with Polly about the day she brought the urn with her mother's ashes home and spilled them when startled by the telephone. She was called away, but upon her return, the pile of ash had vanished from the carpet! The windows were all secured from the inside and Hazel locked the front door before going away. It's a minor, but fun, subplot and could be plucked from my series of posts on real-life, often domestic locked room mysteries (parts: I, II, III, IV and V). The other subplot involves Polly's father, who passed away, and a stack of old letters written to her mother and Renwick's focus was on this plot-thread – as nearly all the clues in this episode point towards this problem. Downside is that it's almost impossible to miss the answer. But is it fair to complain about fair clueing?

Anyhow, The Letters of Septimus Noone is a visual collection of separate puzzles, clicking together through characters and events making connections, however, while this made the plot tidier than the patch-work plotting of The Clue of the Savant's Thumb (2013), it also made the characters and plot feel slight. Juggling between these separate stories meant some lacked the exposure to be fully effective such as Ridley lampooning the modern-day interpretation of Sherlock Holmes. On the other hand, I have to compliment Renwick on how he managed to reinvent the series. Jonathan Creek discarded the duffle coat and left the magician business (and windmill!) behind and married Polly, which now makes them one of those wisecracking, mystery solving couples that were all the rage in the 1940s (e.g. Kelley Roos). 

So, all in all, a somewhat imperfect beginning to the new series, but, hopefully, the next episode has a grand (central) impossible problem at the heart of the episode.

By the way, the final episode of this season is now titled The Curse of the Bronze Lamp (2014), which has a similar problem as the Carter Dickson novel of the same title and involves a kidnap victim disappearing under her captor's eyes as if by teleportation. I hope Renwick's solution doesn't simply redress the trick, but I fear, as this may be the last season, Creek will end up doing an impromptu bullet-catch act with the kidnappers in order to save Polly – and we'll see Maddy back in a cameo at the funeral. Ridley may actually take the torch from Creek as hilarious inept detective who keeps stumbling to the correct solution. A "Sleeping Moore" without the tranquilizer darts.   

Trouble at Sea

"There should be no combination of events for which the wit of man cannot conceive an explanation."

- Sherlock Holmes (Valley of Fear, 1915)

Herbert Brean was an American journalist and a "Perennial Sherlockian," who switched from reading detective stories to writing them and Wilders Walks Away (1948) is his most cited and popular work to date. Personally, I prefer Hardly a Man Is Now Alive (1952), mandatory reading for John Dickson Carr enthusiasts, and The Traces of Brillhart (1961), in which a magazine writer, William Deacon, investigates the alleged immortality of a New York music composer.  

The Traces of Merrilee (1966) marked the second, and final, appearance of Bill Deacon and meddling in police business paid off at the start of this book – as a banking friend hires him to take passage aboard the Montmartre to protect a multimillion dollar investment. Loans were given to fund a big-budget movie, based on Helen of Troy, but a successful return on their investment depends on Merrilee Moore and she disappeared for the time being. There was a solemn promise from the actress to be aboard, but gave an impression of being scared and fearful of the crossing.

Interestingly, there are snippets of impossible crime material present here! Merrilee believes she inherited the gift of Extra-Sensory Perception (ESP) from her mother, who developed the power touring dingy theatres and joints with a mind reading act. The solution to the trick was revealed in a throwaway line, inside a brief back-story, but it's actually pretty clever and could generate year's worth of discussions on its fairness – if properly and prominently used in a detective story. Merrilee's mother predicted she would die at sea (how lovely) and has a recurring nightmare herself about man with a green face hanging by the throat in a closet.

This makes The Traces of Merrilee a borderline impossible crime novel, but the elements are too weak and superficial to, officially, qualify the book as such. This is, however, not to the detriment of Brean as a mystery writer, because they weren't the main focus of the plot and Brean learned from Wilders Walks Away a full-blown locked room mystery wasn't one of his strong suits – hence why I prefer the titles mentioned in the opening of the post.

The Best of the Brean Novels

Back to the story. The recurring nightmare about the green-faced man, hanging from a hook inside a closet, becomes prophetic, however, Deacon simply disposes of the body by dumping it one of the lifeboats. A popular spot for a body dump on an Atlantic cruise, because the murderer picked another lifeboat to discard of the second victim. Unfortunately, the dying words of the victim never translated into Ellerian dying message. The detections of Deacon further consists of tailing a notorious industrial spy, which becomes complicated when there are two men sharing the same name on the ship, slipping in and out of cabins (or being locked up in them) and avoiding being maimed – before confronting the killer during a staged visitation from beyond the grave.

Not very original as far dénouements go, but that's emblematic for The Traces of Merrilee. Brean penned a breezy, fast-paced and fairly clued detective that was fun to read, but, except for the mind-reading act, nothing stood out as particular clever or inspired. Merrilee and Deacon were pretty much the only characters in the book and everyone else simply played their part. I'd place the book closer to (TV lightweights) Murder, She Wrote and Midsomer Murders (fun but unchallenging) than to the Golden Age ancestors Brean penned earlier in his career.

Recommend to fans of Brean and shipboard-set mysteries, but, if you're new to this author, I recommend you begin with Hardly a Man Is Now Alive, The Clock Strikes Thirteen (1954) and The Traces of Brillhart.